Comcast readies its SmartZone service

Comcast Corp. (www.comcast.com) has started sending teaser e-mails to its customers that tout SmartZone, a new Web-based e-mail service that includes voice mail and a universal address book.

Upgrades are expected to start automatically to your Comcast account without charge.

Many customers likely could start using it later this year, said Comcast spokesman Rich Ruggiero.

"This brings together what wasn't together before," he said. "It's one central communications hub for your voice mail and e-mail."

Comcast, which has its Midwest headquarters in Schaumburg, is in a heated competition with AT&T Inc., which has its Midwest headquarters in Hoffman Estates.

Just this week, AT&T's U-Verse Voice launched with digital telephone service via the Internet. It combines home phone, wireless voice mail and messaging that also can be in a single voice mailbox accessible from any phone line or PC.

Comcast has its own IP phone service called Digital Voice and is only in the midst of launching SmartZone.

With SmartZone, you could listen to your Digital Voice messages online from your computer, forward the voice mail in an e-mail and combine multiple address books into one. You also could listen to voice mail in any order, regardless of when they were received and keep up to 90 days of call records, the company said.

It also offers up to 10 gigabytes of mailbox storage for free, compared to the current 250 megabytes.

Comcast has roughly 14.4 million customers nationwide, so the upgrades won't necessarily come market-by-market, Ruggiero said.

"When we do upgrades, it's not overnight, but over a period of time," he said.

Surfing: The 27th annual International Manufacturing Technology Show will feature 1,300 companies, including 240 from Illinois, on Sept. 8 to 13 at McCormick Place in Chicago. Details on different technology centers, forums and programs are at www.imts.com/visitor/attractions.html#center.

•Vernon Hills-based Zebra Technologies Corp. (www.zebra.com), which specializes in radio-frequency identification tags and other products, is offering partners a chance to expand their businesses with new portal and featured under the PartnersFirst program.

•Skokie-based Forsythe Technology Inc. (www.forsythe.com), a national provider of infrastructure services, said it has fully integrated the former Information Security Technology Inc., which it acquired last year. It will now operate under the Forsythe name.

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